Hollywood's king of quirk

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KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: Tim Burton's films are invariably a mix of the eccentric Gothic, surreal and abstract. Johnny Depp, a long-time collaborator, has said of his friend that, "He's an artist, a genius, an oddball, an insane, brilliant, brave, hysterically funny non-conformist". Doesn't leave much out, does he?

Born in Los Angeles, now a resident in England, Burton began his career as an animator for Disney, which he described as being an artist and zombie factory worker. He went on to make films like Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice and The Haunting, autobiographical Edward Scissorhands, and more recently Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland.

He's been in Melbourne for an exhibition of a lifetime's memorabilia, including sketches and models related to most of his films. The original exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art was an enormous success. Only Picasso and Matisse drew more people. I spoke with him in Melbourne.

Tim Burton, let's start with the exhibition. I understand that when the museum curators arrived at your front door and started going through your draws and your cupboards, that their immediate reaction was "a bonanza". But I think what they unearthed surprised you too. Is that so?

TIM BURTON, FILMMAKER & ARTIST: Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not like this meticulous archivist. I just stuff things in draws. And they found things like my first rejection slips from Disney, you know, things that I'd written on napkins and things. And actually, it surprised me, really. I didn't really realise that I'd saved all that stuff.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You said in a Rolling Stone interview nearly 20 years ago that as a child growing up, drawing was a refuge for you, that you always felt distant from your family, but close to Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price and many monsters from many bad movies, that you took sanctuary in the confines of your own imagination. That sounds like an isolated, somewhat isolated childhood in terms of the human connection around you. Is that so?

TIM BURTON: Yeah. I think a lot of it had to do with the time; it was kind of sort of late '50s, '60s American suburbia. It was the kind of culture that wasn't very tactile or emotional. And so I did feel - I don't know how much time you've spent in, let's say Los Angeles or whatever, but it's a kind of isolating cit. Because it's so spread out or whatever, you don't really feel connected to people or things very much. So, I think all of that kind of helped create that feeling of isolation and retreating into your own fantasy world, your own mind.

KERRY O'BRIEN: What inspired Beetlejuice?

TIM BURTON: Well, that was my first strange experience in the sense of, you know - 'cause I'd read a lot - after Peewee, I'd read a lot of scripts that were very just traditional kind of comedy kind of things. And then I got this script that made absolutely no sense and was a very strange - and I couldn't believe any studio wanted to do it. So, that intrigued me to begin with. So, in some ways - and I worked with a lot of people that were, like, good at improv' like Michael Keating and some of the other cast members, so it was - it really opened me up to kind of being more spontaneous.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And Edward Scissorhands just came right out of your head, didn't it?

TIM BURTON: Yeah, that really is probably one of the more personal ones to me, just because it - that was how I felt as a teenager and young adult, and, you know, adult as well, that sort of, you know - and that comes back to my love of sort of classic monster movies where, you know, the monsters are actually the more emotional characters and, you know, they may look a certain way, but inside they have a whole other emotional thing going on. So that's probably one of the more personal ones for me.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But, autobiographical in many ways, wasn't it? I think you've said that you went through a period where you didn't want to touch anyone, you didn't want to be touched?

TIM BURTON: Yeah, I felt very flinched, 'cause again, not coming from a very tactile family ... I had a lot of Italian friends. You'd see their families always hugging each other and kissing each other and I didn't really have that in my background. So I - you know, if somebody came and tried to hug me, I would kind of flinch, or, you know, just wasn't used to that sort of tactile behaviour. So, again, that's sort of where Edward Scissorhands came from.

KERRY O'BRIEN: When you showed Johnny Depp your Scissorhand drawings, he said that he was traumatised by them, haunted by them. They obviously influenced how he came to see the role. Have you found that effective: communicating with your actors through the drawings?

TIM BURTON: Well, some - I mean, because my drawings are not very sophisticated, so I've always been lucky to work with certain collaborators that can just look at something not very - or crude and get the feeling of it. You know, because - that's why I don't do storyboards. It's like, when somebody can look at something and it be crude and rough but get the essence and feeling of it, that I know is a good collaborator for me, you know, somebody that gets it.

That's why I wanted him for Edward Scissorhands 'cause I remember him - you know, he was like a teen idol at that time, kind of the sort of equivalent to, like, the Twilight people, you know? But he didn't feel that way, and that's why I knew that I just had the sense that he would get Edward Scissorhands - you know, don't judge a book by its cover kind of a issue, and it would get the emotion of that character and, you know, he likes to - you know, he's much less a movie star than he is more of a weird character actor like a Boris Karloff or - you know, old horror movie actor that likes to transform themselves into other characters. And so there's that connection with him that I really appreciate.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You once said, and I think again it was in that Rolling Stone article, that you talked about depression that's always hung over you at some level or another. Now that was back in 1992. Is that still the case, and how has it affected your work, or how has it been affected by your work?

TIM BURTON: I feel sort of like a, you know, optimistic pessimist, or, you know, a happy manic depressive. I do have, as everybody does, mood swings and things, but I feel like I've levelled out a bit since. Also having children has sort of levelled me out a little bit more, I think. But those feelings that you have early on in your life, I think they always remain with you, you know, no matter how, you know, secure or happy you are in your life, those feelings that you had early on stay with you.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You talked once of a kind of darkening grey, like a fog rolling in that was getting darker as it came. I mean, just - can you just articulate for me what that can be like for you? Because there's a lot of people out there who suffer depression and who feel there's something wrong with them for feeling it.

TIM BURTON: The key is to try to come out of yourself a little bit, and when those feelings come - when those feelings come on or came on, after a while I could recognise it and, you know, I think that's when you try to - what I try to do is just sort of mentally kind of step out of myself a little bit and go, "OK, here comes the - here it comes", acknowledge it and know that it's coming, then let the fog roll through as fog does, you know? And so I think I've learned to try to acknowledge it and just let it come and pass and usually thankfully it does.

KERRY O'BRIEN: So, have you just tended to take life as it comes? You've had no grand plan, and is that how you see the rest of your working life?

TIM BURTON: Yeah, you know what, that's what I love about life. It's easier earlier in your career 'cause everything's a surprise. As you go along, it's harder to get surprised, but it's the most fun to me is to be surprised with life. And that's always something I'm looking for is, "Oooh, you know: a nice surprise. Something that's special." That's why ...

KERRY O'BRIEN: Like this exhibition?

TIM BURTON: Absolutely, you know. It's not something that I sought out to do or said, "Oh, I'd love to have a exhibition somewhere." They came to me and here it is. And so that's an amazing surprise, you know. And so I've been quite lucky with surprises lately.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Tim Burton, thanks for talking with us.

TIM BURTON: Thankyou so much. Thanks.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And the exhibition will run in Melbourne until October.